EVERETT — Jackson High School junior Sean Roe, 17, has to leave to make it to track practice on time.
But the group of elderly men he has been building a toy train track with don’t want him to leave.
While smiling, they tease Roe that he doesn’t really have to go and ask how they are going to finish snapping wooden pieces of track together without him there.
Roe promises he will be back again soon to build train tracks and talk sports. Everyone seated around the table believes him.
These are some of the “pretty cool guys” included in Roe’s men’s group he formed at Clare Bridge.
Clare Bridge, 2015 Lake Heights Drive, Everett, is a memory care community for senior citizens with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
Roe and other Jackson Honor Society students have volunteered at Clare Bridge for the past two years. The students visit once a month and solve puzzles, bake treats, play cards and drink root beer floats with the residents.
Roe began volunteering at Clare Bridge to fulfill an Honor Society requirement of clocking 10 hours of volunteer service each semester. Then, he continued visiting as part of a senior project in English class to research Alzheimer’s disease. Now, he also comes in Sundays to visit with residents.
“I gave it a shot and loved it,” he said. “This place — I felt called to it.”
Roe serves as vice president of the Honor Society and competes on the school’s track and field team.
He is also taking the lead on organizing Clare Bridge’s annual senior prom at 6:30 p.m. Friday at the facility. This will be the third year the facility hosts a prom for its residents. Roe has been recruiting classmates to dance with the seniors and jazz band students to perform, and is making plans for food, corsages and boutonnieres.
“The support I’ve had has been really positive,” he said. “It’s just been hard to recruit because the dance is the day before the SATs (college entrance exam).”
Roe’s Christian faith has directed him toward showing God’s love, he said, by helping people and being there unconditionally.
“I feel a call working with people with disabilities,” he said.
He formed a men’s group where he and the male residents talk and watch sports and build toy train sets.
Ideally, the train sets remind the residents of their childhood, while building things triggers memories of their younger days when they held jobs requiring them to construct and work with their hands, Roe said.
“It’s always a positive experience when someone can remember it,” he said.
Roe said he focuses on each resident’s strengths to help them work together as a team to put train tracks together.
“Trains are a big hit,” he said.
He also is attached to a female resident, Pat, whom he visits.
Some days Pat remembers Roe and says she saw him in the newspaper for track and is happy to see him, he said. Other days she becomes frustrated because it’s hard to remember words or speak clearly.
“It takes a lot of trust on her part to have a boy come in and sit with her in her room,” he said.
Some of the residents feel comfortable sharing where they are from and their hobbies, he said.
“Some patients are aware they have Alzheimer’s and some are not,” he said. “Some people think it’s other people that have the issue.”
LeAnna West, Clare Bridge life enrichment coordinator, said the residents benefit from interacting with the teens, who re-energize them and bring them back to when they were young.
“You’ve got someone that lets them know they still matter and are important to someone,” she said.
West said the residents are in varying stages of Alzheimer’s disease and most are aware the teenaged volunteers are there, and some can remember the volunteers’ faces.
The volunteers and residents tend to adopt each other.
“Some of these kids don’t have grandparents that live nearby,” she said.
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